Portland (UK) Folk weekend 8-11 May

Subject: Portland (UK) Folk weekend 8-11 May
From: The Shambles
Date: 02 May 03 - 06:24 AM

Brian Flynn and staff will be extending a warm welcome to all Weymouth Folk Festival attendees.

At The Cove House Inn, Chiswell, on the Isle of Portland.

An open invitation - starting with the weekly tune session at 8.30 Thursday 8th May - is extended to all those who wish to make and enjoy folk music.

Come and join us from Saturday 10th Maylunchtime – right through until the last festival survivors on the night of Sunday 11th May.

Friday 9th May - The Piano Dentists - will be performing.

Pop in to the good food and folk-friendly pub, right on Chesil Beach with free parking and just 15 minutes away from Weymouth.

Tel [phone].

A Youth Hostel is just a 5 minute 'stagger' away.

Details of the Weymouth and PORTLAND Borough Council organised - 2nd WEYMOUTH Folk Festival can be found on their website here. http://www.weymouth.gov.uk/main.asp?svid=7&svaid=187&svapid=1581

Full details of the rather sad story of this event, can be found on the following thread Weymouth Folk Festival

For folk not following this thread - perhaps a word of explanation is called for, as after sending out the invite, I received the following and the writer may not be alone in this thinking.

This is an enticing invite, but haven't you been urging us for weeks to boycott Weymouth Folk Festival because of lack of sessions and attitudes of councillors?

Now I find it difficult to see how folk can expect this event in this form, to be widely supported by the folk community, but actually no I have not been urging folk to boycott Weymouth Folk Festival, as a careful read of the above thread will show.

In truth I have urged people to convey their views to the council, over their policy, and many have done so and some of these have also said that they will boycott this festival. That must be a matter for them, but I have challenged folk who do their best to ignore the policy and advise others to do the same, in their desperation to hold this festival on terms dictated by the council.

However, this is an invite to informal participatory events organised on PORTLAND - to take place during the weekend of the Weymouth AND PORTLAND Borough Council organised WEYMOUTH Folk Festival. I am just providing what I hope is an attractive alternative for folk who may feel reluctant to totally support the Council organised event over this one weekend, in contrast to their attitude towards folk music, for the rest of the year

Partly to show that I am not a kill-joy luddite.
Partly to show that folk events can take place on Portland (or indeed in Weymouth), without council money, direction or organisation.
And partly as a protest at the Council's policy - but mainly to make some fine music!

For there are no official Weymouth Festival events planned to take place on Portland, even though Weymouth AND Portland Borough Council's money is funding this, the 2nd event. There may have been some excuse for last year's event, not covering Portland, but there is no such excuse this time.

This is not an easy situation but I have not urged anyone to boycott anything - I have just been presenting the true facts to enable folk to make up their own mind - I am trying always to be positive, in rather negative times.....Come and join us.

You will be made very welcome.

You will not be bombarded with political propaganda – hopefully you will be bombarded by fine music (and dance).

You definitely will NOT be subject to interruption any from council officers – as the Cove House Inn does have a Public Entertainment Licence.

Subject: RE: Portland (UK) Folk weekend 8-11 May
From: The Shambles
Date: 03 May 03 - 06:55 AM

The only way way the Cove session continues is because the licensee, when 'encouraged' by threats of a £20,000 fine or 6 months in prison, decided to pay for a PEL This being the only way the council would permit it to continue.

At the risk locally of being very unpopular Brian has also been very supportive of folk music and dance in the media. I see that a visit and a little bit of custom from those attending this Folk Festival weekend can be seen as a small token of appreciation for his efforts.

Subject: RE: Portland (UK) Folk weekend 8-11 May
From: The Shambles
Date: 04 May 03 - 06:19 AM

See also the following..........

The New Star session RIP

Mummers stopped Cerne Abbas

Subject: RE: Portland (UK) Folk weekend 8-11 May
From: The Shambles
Date: 06 May 03 - 02:50 AM

And going back a bit further -

Council bans Morris Dancing

Subject: RE: Portland (UK) Folk weekend 8-11 May
From: The Shambles
Date: 07 May 03 - 02:25 AM

This earlier national coverage on this local issue) these bits in bold) - from the Daily Telegraph.
Battle over 'last orders' for music
(Filed: 18/01/2003)
Musicians and publicans fear that the new Licensing Bill will impose a tax on music-making that many will be unable to pay. By Colin Randall

It is matchday and 100 football fans, many drunk or getting drunk, sing or shout at the pub's wide screen. Powerful equipment captures every sound, from the thud of boot on ball (or opponent) to the din of the crowd. A few streets away, three or more musicians gather in another pub. Unamplified instruments - a fiddle and guitar, and maybe an accordion, bazouki and tin whistle - are produced and a traditional music session begins.

Guess which activity is at present licensable, with the full might of the law - fines and imprisonment included - held in reserve for transgressors? And guess which will remain so if, as planned, Labour's reform of licensing law secures its royal assent this summer?

In the typically forthright view of Kim Howells, Culture Minister and scourge of modern art, Somerset folk singers and rap, this state of affairs is "bonkers".

He used the word when assuring Mike Harding, BBC radio presenter and session musician, that the Licensing Bill would end such nonsense. So why, with the bill now in its Lords committee stage, are many musicians and music organisers so sure that it does no such thing?

As well as extending drinking hours, the bill ends a licensee's need to apply separately for liquor and entertainment licences. But it also scraps the so-called "two-in-a-bar" exemption, which allows fewer than three people to perform in premises without a public entertainment licence (known as PELs and costing as little as £50 but, for some big city centre venues, £20,000 a year).

Publicans will have to license their premises for virtually any live music, if performed in public or "for consideration and with a view to profit".

Ministers believe the simplicity of a new all-in licensing system will increase rather than restrict access to music. But in the furious debate provoked by their declared route to common sense, they have been accused of lazy, money-grubbing opportunism and downright illiberalism.

For their part, Howells - and loyal backbenchers - accuse objectors led by the Musicians' Union of scaremongering and, as the minister put it to me this week, running "a pernicious lying campaign".
Howells famously speaks his mind. Even as we shook hands at Westminster after meeting earlier this week, he offered one of those disarmingly honest thoughts that seem to appeal and appal in equal measure. "Maybe it won't work," he said. "But no one has come up with a better way of doing it."

That was almost certainly not how the minister meant it to sound. But critics of the bill will seize on his words as they portray the proposals - not unlike the remark - as the flawed product of good intentions.
Many people welcome the attempt to haul into the 21st century a chaotic regime dating from "temporary" measures to curb the drinking of munitions workers during the Great War. A more flexible approach to opening hours, it is said, will discourage binge drinking and please tourists.

But Eliza Carthy, the fiddler, singer and songwriter whose parents - Martin Carthy and Norma Waterson - head Britain's pre-eminent folk dynasty, asks mischievously if the bill is intended to fund another war.
She may be wrong about the war, but wonders what the Government is trying to achieve by putting a tax on music-making, "one of the few free things left in these miserable and frightening times".

Under Labour, Carthy's parents have both been awarded MBEs for services to music. Neither they, she suspects, nor the likes of Billy Connolly, Jasper Carrott or Barbara Dickson - who all started out as folk singers - would have done so well had their early performances in modest venues been the subject of such formal control.

The proposals extend far beyond folk music. Jazz, pub theatre, carol singing, skittles and battle re-enactment are among other pursuits that will be licensable under the new regime.

"Comedy is not affected," says Hamish Birchall, a jazz drummer who is advising the Musicians' Union on its campaign. "But someone reciting Shakespeare in a pub - indeed anything that involves playing a role - would be illegal if the premises were not licensed for public entertainment."
The key battleground, however, is live music. Howells believes passionately that the system will be hugely simplified as pubs, restaurants and other premises seek licences for entertainment at the same time as they obtain permission to sell alcohol.

Licensees will make a single payment of £100-£500 depending on size of premises, plus annual inspection charges of £50-£150. At present, those not applying for a PEL pay £30, plus legal costs, every three years for their drinks licences.

The minister resents the strength and focus of his opponents' campaign. "The bill does not catch church bellringing," he says over coffee at the Commons.
"Nor does it license the testing of equipment in a music shop; studio recording sessions; school concerts or nativity plays where the wider general public is not admitted; music lessons; singing Happy Birthday to granny in a restaurant; hiring a band for a wedding or the whistling postman."

He regards as a slur the notion that he is "in cahoots with Murdoch" because televised sport is also exempted. Surprisingly, he contends that pubs screening live sport never attract complaints from residents or neighbouring business people, while pubs staging live music attract many (he later concedes that he has never known of a jazz or folk club generating such neighbourhood disapproval, either, but argues that venue-by-venue distinctions would be impractical).

The minister also thinks it is insulting to councils to doubt their ability to process, quickly and fairly, applications for the new licences. And he scoffs at the suggestion that licensees might be put off by a procedure that could "hardly be simpler".

In fairness, Howells also deplores local authorities that may have latched on to the debate and, exploiting existing legislation, demanded licence fees from pubs with the most informal of sessions. Musicians claim dozens of events have been closed as a result.

One council, Weymouth and Portland, ignored a harmless weekly singaround at the New Star, a small Portland pub run by Alan Radford and his wife, for five years before warning just before Christmas that they needed a PEL costing £220.

Unable to meet the expense from meagre takings, the Radfords offered the folkies use of their skittle alley as a private club exempt from current law. The singers declined and have departed to a Weymouth pub with a PEL.

"They were like part of the family," says Christine Radford, who says she has been driven by red tape and diminishing income to consider quitting the licensed trade. "I was in tears on their last night."
Tom Grainger, the council's chief executive, points out that 30 per cent of licensed premises in the area have PELs and would protest if a blind eye were turned to others. He denies that the council approach has changed and says it is "most unfortunate" that Eliza Carthy and other musicians are urging a boycott of the council-sponsored folk festival in May.

Another cause celebre is the remarkable carol singing tradition of South Yorkshire. From the mid-19th century, people have met in a series of pubs each Christmas to sing their versions of seasonal songs. Someone has counted at least 30 local variations of While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks By Night.
David Lambert, owner of the Royal Hotel at Dungworth, near Sheffield, pays an organist to accompany the singers at the Sunday lunchtime sessions at his pub. He also runs a monthly live music night, but says his increased takings are nowhere near enough to justify a PEL. "It's another loss for the countryside," he says. "We all feel strongly about it."

Howells accepts that both the New Star singalongs, and the Dungworth carols, would be caught by the new legislation. As regular events, both sessions would have to be licensed.

He holds out no hope of concessions beyond the decision, signalled in a letter to this newspaper, to make church music a special case. But he claims "guidance" to be issued by Tessa Jowell, the Culture Secretary, will make it clear that councils must not impose draconian conditions. The new system will be closely monitored, Howells vows, for signs of "frivolous" objections to licences being approved.

Yet Eliza Carthy fears there is nothing in the bill as published to stop officials acting "out of malice or thickness or as jobsworths" to make it so hard for non-mainstream music to occur that unfashionable but important cultural traditions may just die out.

Some performance lawyers agree, talking of an "extraordinary intrusion on freedom of speech and expression".

"If it were as simple as Howells claims, we would grumble but not object so strongly," says Hamish Birchall. "But councils will be under enormous pressure to be seen to be doing preventative things, with huge cost implications that will force many small businesses to drop their right to have live music at all."

Howells does receive support from some areas of entertainment and the licensed trade. The British Beer and Pub Association, representing brewers and pub chains, broadly welcomes the changes; so does Equity, which believes they could improve working conditions for actors playing in smaller licensed venues.
At grass roots, however, many remain unconvinced. "I voted Labour," says Annie Bright, a jazz singer and former Equity vice-president. "But I certainly won't next time if this goes through without substantial amendment."

Subject: RE: Portland (UK) Folk weekend 8-11 May
From: GUEST
Date: 08 May 03 - 02:19 AM

Kewl

Subject: RE: Portland (UK) Folk weekend 8-11 May
From: The Shambles
Date: 08 May 03 - 09:59 AM

Click here to see this story and photo on the Echo website. It changes quickly so this is it

Weymouth Evening Echo 8 May 2003.

Musicians in folk boycott.

Enthusiasts from around the country claim they will stay away from the Weymouth Folk Festival in a row over entertainment licences.

Licensing laws state that premises hosting more than two people deemed to be singing, dancing or performing should have an entertainment licence.

Local campaigners claim Weymouth and Portland Borough Council, which is sponsoring this weekend's festival with Weymouth Folk Group, have stifled folk musicians by clamping down on informal sessions held at various unlicensed pubs in the borough.

The groups have now organised an alternative event on Portland for people unhappy with the council.
The programme of events at the Cove House Inn on Portland, which has a long association with folk music, has been organised by enthusiast Roger Gall who claims dozens of musicians have pledged support.

The boycott has been backed by top folk musician Eliza Carthy and comes after a small group of singers quit the New Star Inn on Portland after five years because the council warned the owners they needed a licence.

Mr Gall, from Portland, said: "I would like the main festival to be a success because it encourages folk music but the bottom line is that the council's attitude is ridiculous because they enforce this policy. A lot of people have opted to stay away because they feel strongly about this."

He added that the take-up figure of public entertainment licences in Weymouth and Portland was 30 per cent, compared with five per cent nationally. "The council obviously wants to maximise its revenue, particularly at the moment, but people from all over the country say they cannot support this festival because the council only supports folk music when the festival is on." Mr Gall said that he organised the alternative folk sessions because no events were planned for Portland.

"The council is called Weymouth and Portland but yet there's no official events on the island. It feels like Portland has been ignored," he said.

More than 1000 performers are set to attend this weekend's Weymouth Folk Festival from Friday to Sunday.
Highlights include a parade of dance, which sets off from the Jubilee Clock at 12.30pm on Saturday and heads for Weymouth Pavilion, with bands performing including The Oysterband and The Yetties.

Coun Brian Ellis, borough tourism spokesman, said: "There will be no boycott because the line up we have planned is an excellent one. The information I'm getting is that it will be well supported and the event is putting Weymouth on the folk music map."

Coun Ellis added that the row over entertainment licenses should be distanced from the festival.
"I'm a strong supporter of live performance and I do have concerns how the licensing legislation is interpreted by the borough. The borough needs to ensure the licensing isn't too harsh," he added.

Subject: RE: Portland (UK) Folk weekend 8-11 May
From: The Shambles
Date: 08 May 03 - 02:25 PM

Echo Comment 8 May 2003-05-08

Sad note for folk fans

A Government proposal to tighten the law on live music performances is one factor angering Dorset campaigners who are urging a boycott of this weekend's Weymouth Folk Festival.

But they are also not happy with Weymouth and Portland Borough Council, which they feel has been too zealous in its interpretation of the existing law in the context of informal traditional music performances in pubs.

The wrangle is brought into focus this weekend by the calls for a boycott of this weekend's folk festival sponsored by the council.

Musicians of all kinds, not just those whose first love is traditional music, are fighting for a change in the Government's stance, but, meanwhile, local authorities like the borough council have insisted music licenses are required for public performances, however informal they may be.

It is clear that a great many musicians and the owners of some venues, especially small pubs are concerned about the provisions of the new law. It now seems to have attracted widespread opposition, and many venues, we are told, been prompted to close their doors to live music.

Will a boycott by some people of Weymouth's festival produce anything other than divisions within the ranks of committed folk enthusiasts? Surely there must be a better way forward.

Replies to [e-mail]

This last question is a bit rich as it was this newspaper that first introduced the nice emotive word
boycott, when they were fully aware that what was being urged was for people to express their views to the council on their policy - for these messages were also copied to them.

Subject: RE: Portland (UK) Folk weekend 8-11 May
From: The Shambles
Date: 09 May 03 - 09:07 AM

Good fun last night..

Just a word the official pub session list has The Cove down for a 'continuous session' tonight Friday 9th.

Be aware that this is incorrect as The Piano Dentists will be performing, but we will start again Saturday lunchtime and will hope to see you there.